Translators have a long history of making decisions, and the British and the French have a long history of poking fun at each other. So what if a French author’s voice is partly expressed through gently poking fun at British culture, British food or British habits, should that voice still […]
Translation
14 posts
The French love cooking. One of the surprising things about culinary translation is that the English version can be longer than the French. Normally, when translating from French into English, the text becomes more concise. But cooking is different. French cuisine relies heavily on highly specialised culinary verbs that can […]
Recently a client sent me a PDF to translate into English. When I exported the text to Word, the formatting turned into a bit of a jigsaw puzzle of boxes, misaligned text and weird fonts. So I asked what program the file was originally created in. Turns out, it was […]
French to English translation – easy right? Same alphabet, similar sounding words…Some people might say French is similar to English, and while you can use French sentence structure in English and be understood, it often comes across as clunky. One of the hardest skills to hone as a translator: not […]
Picture this: a company eagerly anticipating the launch of its new website, proudly declares it will be “lunching soon” instead of “launching soon”. A seemingly trivial error, but one that could potentially cost the company much more than just a meal. This anecdote serves as a stark reminder of the […]
Are you thinking of expanding internationally or entering a new market? One of the first things you are likely to do is to have your marketing materials translated. So how do you get your message and call to action across effectively in a different language? Choose a translator specialised in […]
If your product or service is only promoted in one language on your website, non-native speakers of that language may have difficulty understanding it fully. The nuanced features and benefits of your product or service may go unnoticed, resulting in reduced engagement with your brand. For many companies, time and […]
So you’re going global and need a translation into English but you have to choose between Australian or British and American English. This will of course be dependent on your audience and where you are selling your product or service. I’m going to focus here on Australian English as I […]
What is translation purpose? Most common definitions would agree that the purpose of translation is to convey the original tone and intent of a message, taking into account cultural and regional differences between source and target languages, but how does this reflect the relationship between translator and client in practice? […]
Found in Translation: How Translation Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World by Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche A book dedicated to translators, gasp! Is this book here to publicly recognise that it is because of us the world communicates? It would seem so. Jost Zetzche, a German translator who […]
Translating for free! Gasp! I know that many translators out there might balk at the idea of doing a translation “for free” in what is already a highly competitive marketplace that can all too often be driven by price not true value. But even in translation some things are priceless. […]
I am a translator. I translate texts from one language to another. Sounds easy doesn’t it? But to get from one language to another, or from source text (ST) to target text (TT), requires a translator to go through a process. Firstly, this involves the translator making a number of […]
Today, March 20, is the UN International Day of Happiness. I don’t know about you but I have always thought of happiness as a relatively abstract concept, but as an individual one. I acknowledge that its synonyms – contentment, satisfaction, jollity (seriously we don’t use this word enough!) or enjoyment […]
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